It still amazed me how many zombies we’d seen on small, uninhabited islands and rocks off the coast. Maybe passing boats had cast those people ashore when they were still alive but in the first throes of infection after a bite.
“He’s in the water,” Batfish said, a tinge of nervousness in her voice.
The dead would come after the living, no matter what obstacles were in front of them. We supposed they were driven by hunger and the scent of a living body was like the enticing whiff of a kebab to a drunk for the undead.
I looked up from the map again and saw the undead guy struggling through the sucking, marshy mud on the river bank. I briefly thought about pulling my side arm and trying a head shot but decided against it. The distance was about fifty yards and the breeze might take the bullet away from the target. Besides, I didn’t want to rattle off a whole magazine trying to hit a stationary target that wasn’t posing an immediate threat. Ammunition was scarce and we tried to use our hand guns only in emergency situations.
“He’s stuck in the mud. He won’t be going anywhere.”
I watched the zombie wailing in frustration, waving his rotten arms around his head, up to his thighs in mud amongst the reeds and unable to take a further step towards us. His mouth hung open and his face looked as though it was contorted in pain and sorrow.
“Too bad, fuck face.” I muttered.
Something green and scaly and reptilian splashed from the water with lightning speed to the zombie’s right. The alligator gripped the blood encrusted zombie around the torso between its jaws. The undead guy disappeared beneath the water in less than two seconds.
“Jesus! Did you see that?” I gasped.
“Fuck, yeah, it was awesome,” Batfish said. “I suppose the gators have been flourishing since the demise of the human race.”
I shivered at the thought of that huge gator feeding on dead flesh then stuffing the remains under a rock or a log for later snacking. I wondered how long that particular zombie would remain kicking and thrashing as the gator chomped away on bits of its body. The only way to annihilate a zombie was to destroy the brain, so the undead guy would jerk around underwater until the head was devoured.
I put thoughts of the watery grave out of my mind and gazed up the river. The water was flat with slight ripples from the current brushing the surface. The warm sun climbed higher into the sky to our right. I wondered what the Mississippi River had in store for us as we slowly chugged between its banks.
Batfish flicked the end of the spliff into the river and pulled out two wooden, folding chairs from one of the upper deck lockers. She unfolded them both and sat down. I sat next to her and we watched the flat marsh land pass by.
“In normal circumstances, this would be a pleasant experience,” Batfish said. “The river, the music, the views, the sunshine.”
The Pixies track moved onto ‘
Where is My Mind
.’
I nodded and gave Batfish a sideways glance. She’d changed quite a bit since I first met her in Brynston, I guess we all had. Batfish was an overweight Goth girl when I met her, what now seemed like twenty years ago. Her best friend, Donna was killed by a stray bullet when we ran into some desperados on the journey to New York. Now, Batfish’s image had changed. She had no real reason to dress in such a Gothic style anymore and she’d lost weight due to our canned food and fresh fish diet. Smith was good at fishing and had caught our supper plenty of times off the back of the boat.
At times, Smith seemed like a different breed from the human race all together. Sometimes he was chatty, other times he was moody and made it obvious he wanted to be left alone. He’d told us his real name was Franco Dematteo but Batfish and I still referred to him as Smith. We’d got used to his pseudonym and couldn’t bring ourselves to call him by his birth name. He was a conundrum I didn’t think I’d ever work out. What we did know about him was – he was a former marine, cop and mobster, skillful with any weapon you put in his hands and also very good at staying alive. He was our unelected leader and we never questioned his ideas or planned routes. We’d been through too much shit to try and be heroes. We were just trying to stay alive.
Batfish and I sat for a while, wrapped up in our own thoughts and enjoying the marijuana induced relative calmness, just watching the tranquility of an unpopulated area. The two dogs, Spot the white Jack Russell and Sherman, the light brown, mastiff, lay on the deck in front of our feet, enjoying the sun. Those two had stuck with us through thick and thin and were good at raising the alarm if we were in any immediate danger.
The funnel suddenly belched out a cloud of black smoke and the engine spluttered a few times.
I turned to Batfish.
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“You got that right. Let’s see what’s going on.”
We slid off the chairs and moved to the control compartment.
Batfish flung open the door.
“What’s the news, Smith?” Batfish asked. “Why is that black shit blowing out the exhaust?”
“It’s called a funnel,” Smith corrected her. “I don’t know for sure but I think these carburetors are fucked. Too much shitty diesel pumping through them. We’ll have to stop someplace for me to take a look at them.”
Smith last gave the boat an overhaul when we stopped in the Florida Keys, which had to be at least 500 miles behind us. We’d had to use some old diesel on occasions, that was probably well past its sell by date. I unfolded the map and searched the area for a place to hole up.
“There’s a marina in a small place called Venice, just up ahead and to the left…or to port,” I said, trying to sound like I was familiar with nautical terms.
“Okay, we’ll head there,” Smith agreed, glancing at where I pointed on the map. “I just hope there’s not a shit load of fucking zombies standing on the jetty, ready to chew our asses off.”
I nodded and lay the map on the console next to the wheel so Smith could see where he was heading. I walked across the upper deck and went down into the cabin below, our cramped, wooden paneled home for the best part of six months. How the hell had we carried on in these basic living conditions? Two sets of two narrow bunks stood on each side of the cabin. Smith slept on the port side top bunk and mine was beneath his. Batfish slept on the bottom bunk starboard side and used the top bed to stash her ever increasing bags of items we’d hauled from other vessels and our shore side raids. The lockers positioned against the walls in front of the bunks were crammed with tins of food and bottles of water. Our special booze supply was kept in the locker under the deck, below the wooden table in the center of the cabin. The galley consisted of a miniscule oven beneath an equally small hob to the right of the table, behind our bunks. A small shower cubicle and toilet was positioned at the bow end, forward of the bunks.
We kept the rest of the equipment like flares, oars, ropes and Smith’s fishing gear inside the lockers on the upper deck. A vast stash of dollar bills, weapons and ammunition were stored in the control cabin where Smith steered the boat.
I took a tin of dog food from the locker and the bent fork we’d reserved for feeding the hounds. If we were going shore side, I wanted to get the dogs fed before we reached the harbor and the remains of civilization. Even the scent of dog food would attract zombies from a distance. They may have been long dead but their sense of smell still remained and even heightened in their reanimated state. The dogs would gobble up their food before we landed in the harbor.
I clambered up the wooden ladder and picked up the dog’s dishes from the upper deck. The dogs wagged their tails and sniffed the air between us, knowing it was feeding time. I dished out the sloppy meat substance, obviously serving more to the bigger dog, Sherman. Smith always gave them equal shares when he fed them, which resulted in Spot, the Jack Russell having the shits for a couple of days.
The dogs lapped up their food and I watched them eat. I wondered what the hell they made of all this. They didn’t seem to mind too much as long as they were with us and fed regularly. Sometimes we’d let them paddle in the sea to give them a bit of exercise.
Smith turned the boat left, or to port to use my nautical terminology, around a tree lined headland and through a wide gap in the river. The spur off the main river narrowed as we approached what used to be the small town of Venice. Some empty industrial basins lay on the opposite river bank. Unkempt grass and reeds sprouted around the derelict buildings and tall, rusting silos stood behind the basins.
We looked around the basins for any disused boats or anything that resembled a workshop amongst the dilapidated buildings. The building roofs were sagged and bowed and crumbled away in places leaving gaping holes revealing the inner timbers. The place looked like it hadn’t been inhabited for quite some time.
Smith slowed the boat engine so we slowed to a crawl but still continued traveling south and east along the narrower part of the river. He craned his neck, glancing into each basin as we passed by. I joined him inside the control cabin and gazed down at the map on the desk by the wheel.
The river spur split into two and Smith studied the map then steered the boat to the route to our right.
“The marina should be just up ahead on the starboard side,” he said. “I hope there are some parts we can use, otherwise we’re going to be royally fucked. This engine won’t keep going much longer.”
For some reason, I thought about Scotty from the old 1960’s ‘
Star Trek
’ TV series. I couldn’t help but giggle to myself.
Smith gave me an inquisitive look. “What?”
“
The engines cannae’ take it, captain.
” I tried to impersonate Scotty in a terrible Scottish accent.
Smith shook his head. “You need to lay off that fucking weed, kid.”
We sailed by some former sight-seeing barges, bobbing around the bank to our left and partially covered by overhanging trees. Their overhead canopies were ripped and shredded by the overhanging branches and the once sparkling, white paint work was now algae green.
Smith turned to starboard into the semi circular shaped marina, where around a dozen discarded boats were still tethered to the jetty, bobbing slightly on the water.
“Let’s see what we got,” Smith said.
He steered the boat slowly around the marina looking for any boats that were similar to ours.
“Nothing remotely compatible,” he grunted. “These are all high powered fishing boats, built for speed and day trips. The engines won’t be the same as our old chug boat.”
I nodded like I knew what he was talking about. I wouldn’t know one boat engine from another.
“We’ll moor up on the jetty and take a look around,” Smith said, steering to the wooden landing stage in the center of the marina. “There must be some workshops around here someplace.”
Smith guided the boat towards the jetty and I went to the bow or the sharp end as I often referred to it, and prepared to loop the head rope around the shore side cleat. I explained the plan of action to Batfish, who still sat on her chair on the upper deck.
A crescendo of chirping from birds and buzzing of crickets from the overgrown trees and grass greeted us as we slowed against the jetty. I hopped onto the wooden planks, looped the rope around the cleat and secured it between the steel bollards. Smith cut the engine and tossed me the stern rope, which I secured in a similar fashion.
“We’ll make a seafarer out of you yet, Wilde Man,” Smith said, grinning.
He put on his Blues style shades, checked his Desert Eagle hand gun was loaded and collected a few extra magazines.
“You got your piece on you?” Smith called to me.
I nodded and patted my shoulder holster containing my Glock-22 that I’d recovered from an abandoned Police launch off the Maryland coast.
Batfish said she didn’t want to join us poking around in some gloomy boat sheds and would stay onboard with the dogs. Smith racked an Ithaca pump action shotgun and handed it to her.
“Fire it a couple of times if you get into any trouble,” he said. “We won’t be going far.”
Smith joined me on the jetty and we set off in the direction of the surrounding buildings. Clusters of buzzing insects and chirping crickets presented an eerie back drop of sound as we trudged through the overgrown grass.
For some reason, I sensed danger. My developed senses of threat were in the red zone on my inner zombie radar pulsing inside my head.
Chapter Three
A greenish and gray colored snake slithered through the grass a few inches in front of me. I leapt back a couple of feet, whimpering like a soppy child. Smith looked at the snake and chuckled.
“It’s only a little grass snake, Wilde. What the fuck?”
“I don’t like snakes,” I spluttered, screwing up my face in disgust.
Smith watched the reptile slither away through the grass and beckoned me forward.
“That damn snake is probably wondering who the hell that big jerk is, jumping about like a five-year old girl.”
“I’ve never liked snakes they just give me the shits, they always have. Even when I see them on the movies I get…”
Smith stopped me babbling by raising his hand, his palm flat in my direction. We stopped walking and stood motionless. He watched the narrow gap between two of the rundown, cream stucco clad buildings. A dark shadow covered the space and the sunlight glinted above the crumbling roof tops.
I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise. A bird gargled in a high pitch tone somewhere behind us but my senses picked up on another noise. The sound of grass rustling came from the gap between the buildings, and then I heard a low moan.
Smith drew his Desert Eagle and I followed suit and pulled my Glock from the holster. Smith took a slow, tentative step forward and slightly to the left. My guess was he was trying to eliminate the bright sunlight shining directly in our eyes.
One lone figure stumbled around the corner of the structure to our left and into the shadow between the buildings in front of us. I shielded my eyes from the sun’s rays with my left hand and steadied my hand gun with my right onto the target. The figure emitted a throaty howl and lurched between the two buildings towards us. The zombie used to be a male in its former life and had been dead for some considerable time, judging by his decomposed state. It lifted an emaciated arm and quickened the staggering pace slightly.